NYTimes.com Article: Questioning Terror Suspects in a Dark and Surreal W

This article from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by threehegemons@aol.com.


"Senior American officials said physical torture would not be used against Mr. 
Mohammed, regarded as the operations chief of Al Qaeda and mastermind of the 
Sept. 11 attacks. They said his interrogation would rely on what they consider 
acceptable techniques like sleep and light deprivation and the temporary 
withholding of food, water, access to sunlight and medical attention. "

A number of questions raised--what is the point of having definitions of 
torture if there only function is to make the torturers slightly more creative?

Is Foucalt's argument that techniques of discipline worked out in the context 
of incarceration migrate to other sites in society relevant here?

Steven Sherman



threehegemons@aol.com


Questioning Terror Suspects in a Dark and Surreal World

March 9, 2003
By DON VAN NATTA Jr. 




 


This article was reported by Raymond Bonner, Don Van Natta
Jr. and Amy Waldman and written by Mr. Van Natta. 



CAIRO, March 8 - The capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
provides American authorities with their best opportunity
yet to prevent attacks by Al Qaeda and track down Osama bin
Laden. But the detention also presents a tactical and moral
challenge when it comes to the interrogation techniques
used to obtain vital information. 

Senior American officials said physical torture would not
be used against Mr. Mohammed, regarded as the operations
chief of Al Qaeda and mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
They said his interrogation would rely on what they
consider acceptable techniques like sleep and light
deprivation and the temporary withholding of food, water,
access to sunlight and medical attention. 

American officials acknowledged that such techniques were
recently applied as part of the interrogation of Abu
Zubaydah, the highest-ranking Qaeda operative in custody
until the capture of Mr. Mohammed. Painkillers were
withheld from Mr. Zubaydah, who was shot several times
during his capture in Pakistan. 

But the urgency of obtaining information about potential
attacks and the opaque nature of the way interrogations are
carried out can blur the line between accepted and
unaccepted actions, several American officials said. 

Routine techniques include covering suspects' heads with
black hoods for hours at a time and forcing them to stand
or kneel in uncomfortable positions in extreme cold or
heat, American and other officials familiar with
interrogations said. Questioners may also feign friendship
and respect to elicit information. In some cases, American
officials said, women are used as interrogators to try to
humiliate men unaccustomed to dealing with women in
positions of authority. 

Interrogations of important Qaeda operatives like Mr.
Mohammed occur at isolated locations outside the
jurisdiction of American law. Some places have been kept
secret, but American officials acknowledged that the C.I.A.
has interrogation centers at the United States air base at
Bagram in Afghanistan and at a base on Diego Garcia in the
Indian Ocean. 

Qaeda operatives, including Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a suspect
in the planning of the Sept. 11 attacks, were initially
taken to a secret C.I.A. installation in Thailand but have
since been moved, American officials said. 

Intelligence officials also acknowledged that some suspects
had been turned over to security services in countries
known to employ torture. There have also been isolated, if
persistent, reports of beatings in some American-operated
centers. American military officials in Afghanistan are
investigating the deaths of two prisoners at Bagram in
December. 

American officials have guarded the interrogation results.
But George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence,
said in December that suspects interrogated overseas had
produced important information. 

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld have said that American techniques
adhere to international accords that ban the use of torture
and that "all appropriate measures" are employed in
interrogations. 

Rights advocates and lawyers for prisoners' rights have
accused the United States of quietly embracing torture as
an acceptable means of getting information in the global
antiterrorism campaign. "They don't have a policy on
torture," said Holly Burkhalter, the United States director
of Physicians for Human Rights, one of five groups pressing
the Pentagon for assurances detainees are not being
tortured. "There is no specific policy that eschews
torture." 

Critics also assert that transferring Qaeda suspects to
countries where torture is believed common - like Egypt,
Jordan and Saudi Arabia - violates American law and the
1984 international convention against torture, which bans
such transfers. 

Some American and other officials subscribe to a view held
by a number of outside experts, that physical coercion is
largely ineffective. The officials say the most effective
interrogation methods involve a mix of psychological
disorientation, physical deprivation and ingratiating acts,
all of which can take weeks or months. 

"Pain alone will often make people numb and unresponsive,"
said Magnus Ranstorp, deputy director of the Center for the
Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrews
University in Scotland. "You have to engage people to get
into their minds and learn what is there." 

About 3,000 Qaeda and Taliban suspects have been detained
since the fall of 2001. Some have since been freed. The
largest known group, about 650, is being held at Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba. American officials said the detainees at
Guantánamo and similar military-run centers were not
regarded as having valuable information. 

Senior Qaeda members, however, are interrogated by
specially trained C.I.A. officers and interpreters. F.B.I.
agents submit questions but do not generally take part,
American officials said. 


Starving the Senses 
Deprivation 
And Black Hoods 


Omar al-Faruq, a confidant
of Mr. bin Laden and one of Al Qaeda's senior operatives in
Southeast Asia, was captured last June by Indonesian agents
acting on a tip from the C.I.A. Agents familiar with the
case said a black hood was dropped over his head and he was
loaded onto a C.I.A. aircraft. When he arrived at his
destination several hours later, the hood was removed. On
the wall in front of him were the seals of the New York
City Police and Fire Departments, a Western official said. 

It was, said a former senior C.I.A. officer who took part
in similar sessions, a mind game called false flag,
intended to leave the captive disoriented, isolated and
vulnerable. Sometimes the décor is faked to make it seem as
though the suspect has been taken to a country with a
reputation for brutal interrogation. 

In this case, officials said, Mr. Faruq was in the C.I.A.
interrogation center at the Bagram air base. American
officials were convinced that he knew a lot about pending
attacks and the Qaeda network in Southeast Asia, which Mr.
bin Laden sent him to set up in 1998. 

The details of the interrogation are unknown, though one
intelligence official briefed on the sessions said Mr.
Faruq initially provided useless scraps of information. 

What is known is that the questioning was prolonged,
extending day and night for weeks. It is likely, experts
say, that the proceedings followed a pattern, with Mr.
Faruq left naked most of the time, his hands and feet
bound. While international law requires prisoners to be
allowed eight hours' sleep a day, interrogators do not
necessarily let them sleep for eight consecutive hours. 

Mr. Faruq may also have been hooked up to sensors, then
asked questions to which interrogators knew the answers, so
they could gauge his truthfulness, officials said. 

The Western intelligence official described Mr. Faruq's
interrogation as "not quite torture, but about as close as
you can get." The official said that over a three-month
period, the suspect was fed very little, while being
subjected to sleep and light deprivation, prolonged
isolation and room temperatures that varied from 100
degrees to 10 degrees. In the end he began to cooperate. 

Mr. Faruq began to tell of plans to drive explosives-laden
trucks into American diplomatic centers. A day later,
embassies in Indonesia and more than a dozen other
countries in Southeast Asia were closed, officials said. He
also provided detailed information about people involved in
those operations and other plots, writing out lengthy
descriptions. He held out longer than Mr. Zubaydah, who
American officials said began to cooperate after two months
of interrogation. 

American intelligence knows a great deal about Mr.
Mohammed, who has been sought since the mid-1990's. That
knowledge, an expert said, can provide leverage. "The
important thing is to construct the suspect's personal
history and learn about the person before you interrogate
them," a European counterterrorism official said. "Shock is
a great technique. When we can show someone that we already
know a lot about them, including intimate personal details,
they are shocked and more likely to start talking." 


The Centers 

Details Emerge 
From the Shadows 



The
secret C.I.A. center at Bagram where Mr. Faruq probably
remains is near the two-story detention center where
lower-level suspects are being held. Both sites are off
limits, even to most military personnel. The only
descriptions of life inside have come from released
detainees. 

American officials at the base say that all detainees are
treated according to international law and are held under
humane conditions. Still, the Americans expressed
reluctance to describe details of the conditions because,
as Col. Roger King, spokesman for the American-led force in
Afghanistan, put it: "Every detail we give you about how we
run the facility provides information to the enemy about
how to be more successful in resisting if captured." 

But he did provide some information that both complemented
and contradicted the descriptions given by former
detainees. 

In a typical prison, where punishment is the aim, routine
governs life. At Bagram, where eliciting information is the
goal, the opposite is true. Disorientation is a tool of
interrogation and therefore a way of life. 

To that end, the building - an unremarkable hangar - is
lighted 24 hours a day, making sleep almost impossible,
said Muhammad Shah, an Afghan farmer who was held there for
18 days. 

Colonel King said it was legitimate to use lights, noise
and vision restriction, and to alter, without warning, the
time between meals, to blur a detainee's sense of time. He
said sleep deprivation was "probably within the lexicon." 

Prisoners are watched, moved and, according to some,
manhandled by military police officials. Most detainees
live on the hangar's bottom floor, a large area divided
with wire mesh into group cells holding 8 to 10 prisoners
each. Some are kept on the top floor in isolation cells. 

Former detainees have given disparate accounts of their
treatment, with the harshest tales, predictably, emerging
from the isolation cells. Those who have probably been
subjected to the most thorough interrogations, and the
greatest duress, have probably not been released. 

Colonel King said that an American military pathologist had
determined that the deaths of two prisoners in December
were homicides and that the circumstances were still under
investigation. 

Two former prisoners said they had been forced to stand
with their hands chained to the ceiling and their feet
shackled in the isolation cells. 

One said he was kept naked except when he was taken to
interrogation room or the bathroom. 

Mr. Shah, who was never in an isolation cell, said neither
his hands nor feet were ever tied, but he had seen
prisoners with chains around their ankles. 

Colonel King said that the building was heated and that the
prisoners were fed a balanced diet under which most gained
weight. Mr. Shah said he had received plentiful food -
bread, biscuits, rice and meat - three times a day. 

The center holds fewer than 100 people, so detainees are
regularly released or transported elsewhere to make room
for more. Most probably spend two to three months there,
Colonel King said. 

Mr. Shah said his interrogators used the threat of moving
him to Guantánamo Bay to try to force cooperation, warning
him conditions there would not be as pleasant. 


Guantánamo Bay 
Order Obscures 
Signs of Distress 



At
Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, American military officials said
the population, now relatively steady at about 650, was
sorted into varying categories of dangerousness, a change
from the early days when prisoners were treated equally,
each isolated in an individual cell. 

This month the military command opened a new
medium-security section called Camp Four where selected
prisoners live in dormitory-style housing, congregate,
shower regularly, play board games and are able to write
more frequent letters to family members. About 20 prisoners
moved in this week, and when construction is completed as
many as 200 prisoners could be housed there. 

"This is designed to house people who are deemed to be less
of a security risk," said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a
military spokesman at the base. 

But underlying the superficial orderliness are signs of
deep psychological distress among the population. There
have been 20 reported suicide attempts involving the
prisoners, an extraordinarily high number compared with
other prison populations, said Dr. Terry Kupers, an Oakland
psychiatrist who is an authority on mental health in
prisons. 

[Another suicide attempt took place on Friday, The
Associated Press said today.] 

Except for those who are recently promoted to Camp Four,
the regime for most prisoners has been isolation in single
cells. They are permitted out of the cells twice a week,
for 15 minutes each time, to shower and exercise in the
yard. They are not permitted to have physical contact with
one another. 

Lt. Cmdr. Barbara Burfeind, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said
guards were trained to recognize signs of deep depression
and had managed to prevent any suicides. 


Foreign Soil 
Many Definitions 
Of `Acceptable' 


Far less is known
about the conditions for the suspected Qaeda members who
have been turned over to foreign governments, either after
the United States finished with them or as part of the
interrogation procedure. Even the numbers and locations are
a mystery. 

American and foreign intelligence officials have
acknowledged that suspects have been sent to Jordan, Syria
and Egypt. In addition, Moroccan intelligence officials
have questioned suspects and shared information with their
American counterparts. 

In one case in Morocco, lawyers for three Saudis and seven
Moroccans accused of plotting to blow up American and
British ships in the Strait of Gibraltar last summer said
their clients were tortured. Moroccan officials denied that
physical torture was used but acknowledged using sleep and
light deprivation and serial teams of interrogators until
the suspects broke. 

"I am allowed to use all means in my possession," a senior
Moroccan intelligence official said. "You have to fight all
his resistance at all levels and show him that he is wrong,
that his ideology is wrong and is not connected to
religion. We break them, yes." 

In Cairo, leaders of several human rights organizations and
attorneys who represent prisoners said torture by the
Egyptian government's internal security force had become
routine. They also said they believed that the United
States had sent a handful of Qaeda suspects to Egypt for
harsh interrogations and torture by Egyptian officials. 

"In the past, the United States harshly criticized Egypt
when there was human rights violations, but now, for
America, it is security first - security, before human
rights," said Muhammad Zarei, a lawyer who had been
director of the Cairo-based Human Rights Center for the
Assistance of Prisoners. 

Egyptian officials denied that any Qaeda members or terror
suspects had been moved to Egypt. An Egyptian government
spokesman, Nabil Osman, blamed rogue officers for abuses
and said there was no systematic policy of torture. 

"Any terrorist will claim torture - that's the easiest
thing," Mr. Osman said. "Claims of torture are universal.
Human rights organizations make their living on these
claims. Their job is not to talk about the human rights of
the victim but of the human rights of the terrorist or
those in jail." 

Mr. Osman declined to say whether Egypt had assisted with
interrogations of Qaeda suspects at the request of the
Americans. He would say only that both governments had
cooperated in sharing information about terrorists and
potential terrorist activities. 

"We are providing them with a wealth of information," he
said. 

He said many of Egypt's antiterrorism initiatives, like
military tribunals, had been imitated by the Untied States.
"We set the model," he said, "for combating terrorism." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/09/international/09DETA.html?ex=1048153684&ei=1&en=bf8010f07b01f68e



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